Roy Efrat

Roy Efrat (b. 1979), lives and works in Berlin.

Roy Efrat’s work consists of installation pieces, that include paintings,  performance and video works.  Interested in the meeting point of the three mediums – a combination which allows to challenge a distinction between memory and experience and subsequently – he wishes to focuses on the present act . The installations he creates attempts to challenge physical elements, both thematically and aesthetically, by turning a given painting to a background that servers a video projection, and the moving image as a reference to an actual, physical moving body.

Efrat takes an interest in the storytelling process – he follows a given narrative, finding it’s elegantly elusive points, then turns to search for imagery relating to the theme. His sources are always public platforms – Google, daily press, art history; He does not conceal their origin, but attempts to produce the paintings as stencils, as though they are opposed to the most basic movement concealed in them.

Efrat’s past experience as a dancer and choreographer in contemporary dance companies reveals itself in his installations. He seems to be obliged to a contemporary viewer – one who can easily recognize and relate to rhythmic and dynamic movement of an image, it’s relation with sound – yet he seems to be interested in the ability to introduce this viewer with a different scene. This, being the heavier, richer, more complex logic and history of the dramatic arts. By that, Efrat’s own storytelling is one that defies restrictions of both fields, and asks his viewer to do the same.